I had to bite the bullet and tell my butt knuckle balls to suck it up.

This is a conversion I had with Rocket about a week ago:

Rocket: Mom, my balls really hurt.

Mom: Your balls hurt? Why?

Rocket: Well, because I was standing on them a lot in Karate class.

Mom: You were standing on your balls??!!

Rocket: Yeah!! The balls of my feet. I was standing on the balls of my feet.

Mom: Oh! I understand now. I thought you meant your balls... like... your private parts.

Rocket: NO! (laugh) Thats funny- standing on my private parts!

Mom: Yeah, that's why I was confused.

Rocket: Well, here is how you can not get confused. If I say 'butt knuckle balls', then I am talking about my hiney balls. But if I say 'balls', then I mean the balls of my feet.

(I have no clue where he came up with ANY of this terminology)

At this point I burst out laughing

Mom: (while laughing) butt knuckle balls?!!

Rocket: I am serious. It's not funny. (He gives me an angry look which lasts 2 seconds, and then he can't help but start laughing too.)

This last week, we were spending the week in Breckenridge- a vacation that Matt won for us a couple months ago. One day we rented bikes to ride to Dillon (a 25 mile round trip). Rocket rode on a "tag-a-long" which attatches to my bike to turn the bike into a tandem bike. Roxanne rode in a carriage behind Matt. The wind was in my ears as we rode, but I could hear Rocket shouting things to me from behind. At one point we had this conversation:

Rocket: Mom, my butt knuckle balls hurt!!!

Mom: I know, so do mine!!

Rocket: But, Mom, I thought you didn't have any butt knuckle balls!?

Mom: You're right, I don't.

(A few moments pass)

Rocket: Mom, I had to bite the bullet and tell my butt knuckle balls to suck it up!! If yours still hurt, you should do the same thing!

Mom: (laughing so hard) OK!

So, that is how I came up with the title for this blog. I think it is the best title I have had yet. Now, we will just have to extinguish this sort of language before school starts again.

You didn't hear it from me...

I am feeling kind of lazy right now, because I just got back from a week long family vacation (which I am actually excited about blogging about... but later). So I am going to mooch off of other people's blogs. I hope they don't mind.

Here you can read Cheryl's blog about us all going to a Rockie's game earlier this summer.
They lost

Here you can read Betty (my mother in law) write about taking my kids to the Uncle Wilbur fountain.

Here Betty talks about her granddaughters (including Roxanne) and their dollies.

Here Sarah B. (my sis-in-law) writes about our camping trip together. You can view a great picture of me embracing my manly side with an axe. Interesting fact: two thirds of my sister-in-laws are named Sarah. The other third are named Becca.

Here you can view a video of my kids and niece being very dirty while singing Happy Birthday to their beloved cousin, Elias, who so tragically lives very very far away.

Maybe I will just hire other people to blog for me from now on.

500 Years After the Renaissance

Before (Sistine Madonna Detail): After (500 Years After the Renaissance):

This painting has been my baby for he last 6 months (not the top painting- that was Raphael's baby... or atleast part of his baby. But the bottom painting is mine). I just delivered this painting to a man named "The Buddha" so that it can be exhibited in an art show in Denver that opens on July 4th. This is a first for me- being in a real art show (because college shows and coffee shop shows don't count). So I am now officially a "real" artist (but my criterium for that changes constantly, and I can never seem to keep up). Each artist in the show has chosen a classic peice of artwork to rework in a "low brow" style. I can't wait to see all the other creations! I have been staring at this peice of artwork endlessly, especially in the last week, as I nit pick every part of it. So I can't stand to look at it anymore. Giving it away has givin me a sense of relief, because it is literally out of my hands now (and in the hands of Buddha).

Meaning (skip this paragraph if you dont care about the meaning):

The meaning of the piece is pretty simple. As the title implies, this painting takes place 500 years after the renaissance (when the original was created) and that roughly calculates out to be around the current date. Ofcourse, the angels have died and their flesh has deteriorated, symbolizing the end of the renaissance. But an baundance of life and color has bloomed surrounding the carcusses, symbolizing the rebirth that still continues today because of the artistic revolution 500 years ago known as the renaissance, which, in fact, means "rebirth". The painting also should bring to mind the great dichotomy of all time that death is a gateway to life.

Details:

The tattoo on the skulls head says "Sistine Madonna"- the name of the woman the baby angel is gazing at in the original masterpeice.

The mantis is going after this bee, which I don't know if they ever really do that, but I saw on the internet once a clip of a mantis catching a humming bird and piercing it's little heart with it's claw and then eating it. It was pretty awesome.
Spiders are one of my favorite living things, so I included one. I also always put butterflies in my paintings. Seahorses are my favorite too, but there was no way to include one. There is a total of 11 living creatures in the painting (the skelectons are not living).

Buzzin Around

This was a big bee. It was pokin its head into the bluebell flowers at the park today. I was not paying attention to my children as I took these picture. They could have been abducted or killed. Oh by the grace of God they weren't...

The third child in these pics is Chloe. She is our neighbor whom we seem to have adopted for the summer.

Dr. Sketchy in Jeopardy

On Sunday, our family had just arrived back home after a weekend of camping, and I sure was exhausted. I would have opted out of this month's Dr. Sketchy's had it not been for the email I had received earlier in the week. It informed us that the future of Dr. Sketchy's Denver was at risk of being discontinued entirely if more participants didn't show up. This was scary news. If Dr. Sketchy's doesn't stick around, I will have to resort back to plain ol' regular life drawing sessions- with plain ol' regular, boring, buck nekid models. No sparkling pasties, no corsets, no high heels, no glittery red lipstick, and worst of all, no prizes. So I had to go, and thankfully so did a good number of other people, which means we can keep our fingers crossed and hope the event doesn't fizzle out. It has served to give me a good dose of monthly inspiration since moving to Colorado. The model for the night was the wonderful Lexy (which rhymes with sexy) Demure. Here are a few of my drawings for the night (but I was really feeling pooped and not too drawy or creative).

My drawings can be viewed at this link (contains nudity)

Everybody Dance Now!

Rocket rocks it out for your entertainment.... (don't know if this will work)

Beautiful Bruise

While I was in the Springs, I was lucky enough to catch up with the most awesome chick in the city, Jollene (aka Mrs. J Fresh). Every time we meet up, she never ceases to amaze me with her awesomeness, and I am frustrated that she has to live a whole city away from me (otherwise stalking her would be much more convenient). The first time I saw her, she was her regular awesome self- on her way to a softball game (that would change everything). The second time I saw her, she had taken her awesomeness to another level with this rockin black eye (to the left).

Now for most people, a blackeye would bring their appearance down. But Jollene makes blackeyes look fashionable. Look at how well her bruise compliments her dreamy aqua eye color. It's amazing. And yes, I am sure she always makes sure that her rings coordinate with her eyes, and her nail polish coordinates with her lips. She is just so saavy like that. Ok, I admit it- I am obsessed with Jollene.

Castle Murals

I spent the last week at my parents' house in the Springs painting murals on their new castle playhouse. It has two huge towers, that my Dad built (it's way cooler than the playhouse he built when he actually had kids of his own at home). On one side of the towers is the "castle courtyard" and on the other side is an "enchanted forest"

These are some of the images on the "castle courtyard" portion of the playground:

Here are some images painted in the "enchanted forest":

Today is Father's Day, and I painted these things for my parents, so now I am declaring it a father's day gift. Happy Father's Day, Dad. You are a talented playground builder.

Masks: How To

Several people suggested that they would like to make masks of their own after my last post. It is very easy, and I think everyone should do it. My family has our masks hanging on the wall, as a symbolic family portrait of the four of us (yes, even Matt made one!). Here I am posting my directions on how to do it (athough this is not neccessarily the "right" way). It is a two day project because there needs to be a good amount of drying time between step one and two. It's not as complicated as these directions make it look- I just included every single little detail. But you could probably guess about most of this, and it would work too (cause that is how I figued it out).

DAY ONE

• Goop: In a large mixing bowl mix together one bottle of elmers glue, like 2-4 cups of flour and enough water to give it a very running pancake batter consistency. This measurements of these ingrediants doesn't need to be exact at all.
  
  
• Blow up balloons to approximately the size of the mask-makers head. Set the ballon in a bowl (to keep it from rolling around).



• Tear up strips of newspaper and dip them in the goop and then smooth them onto the balloon in a criss crossing pattern. As soon as the top half of the balloon is covered, turn it upside down and cover the other half. But don't cover the "belly button" of the balloon. The more layers of goopy newspaper you use, the more sturdy your mask will be. The more patient kids usually have a better mask.



• When the whole balloon is covered in 3-4 layers of goopy newspaper, hang the balloon upside down by its "belly button" with a clothespin on a clothes line.



• Spray all the kids off with a hose.



• Let the balloons dry over night. In the morning they should be as hard as a rock.
  

DAY TWO

• Cut the "belly button" off of the ballon with scissors. This is the funnest part. You will hear the balloon shrivle up inside, while the dried paper mache maintains the shape of the balloon.



• Cut the balloon shape in half starting at the hole where the belly button stuck out. Now you have two masks to make- one for the kid and one for a mom or dad.



• Measure the distance between the inner corners of the mask-makers eyes and then mark that distance on the mask (it is closer than you would guess it to be). Then draw the eyes on and cut them out.



• To make the features on the face, we used play dough. Smush the playdough onto the mask to make the nose, lips, eye brows, cheek bones, chin, pimples, worts, or whatever else will protrude from the face of the mask.



• Put the entire mask (with the playdough smushed onto it) in the microwave for 1 or 2 minutes to dry and harden the playdough. Don't put it in for too long or it will puff up (I don't know why).



• Then we painted white primer onto the entire mask. This step might be skippable if you don't have primer.



• Then paint the mask. I used my nice acrylic paints because that's just what I had. You could probably use cheaper craft paints though too.



• Decorate the mask with embellishments, if desired. I just let the kids use what I had on hand- beads, rope, gemstones, glitter. You could use feathers too, but I think they make them look tacky.



• Trim the edges of the mask to make them smooth.



• After the kids were all done, I painted over all of their masks with a polyurathane to make them shiny. This is something I had on hand, but if you don't have it, it's not neccessary.

MASKS

Ok, so I suppose I must have been in a grumpy mood when I said that I wasn't looking forward to the kids being out of school for the summer. We are actually having a pretty good time together. No matter where I live, there never seems to be a shortage of kids to crash my house in pursuit of crafts. That's what I get for being known as the artsy one. This week the neighborhood kids came over and we did my favorite craft: paper mache masks. Being an artistic person myself, sometimes watching a kid do art can frustrate me, because everything in me wants to take over the project and do it for them. But if I stand back and keep myself from taking control, then the kids never cease to amaze and surprise me by the creative ideas they come up with on their own. It's so fun to see how each kids' mask is unique and reflects something about their own personality. Above we have "The Egyptian Diva" by Chloe who is quite a sassy diva herself!

Next is "Jesus" by Cullen who is apparently much more spiritually focused than the rest of us (seriously, he's 5 and thought of that idea all on his own!)

This is "The Easter Egg Fairy Princess Monster" by Roxanne who was extra adamant about me not helping her at all.... and it shows.

This is "The French Kung Fu Master" by Jordan who tends to use Kung Fu moves a little too often for my comfort level.

This is "The Emo Dude" by Juliana who is in constant pursuit of a real hot emo dude to get freaky with.... but for the record, I absolutely don't condone that.

This is "Honey Collogen Lips Anisten" by Traci whom I love because she did this with me even though she's not a kid!

This is "The Friendly Giant" by Rocket who doesn't think this mask is the scariest thing in the world... but everyone else does.

And lastly, this is "Missy Star Pimpleton" by ME who is an amazingly crafty, kid-loving, rockstar of a mama... but don't say you heard that from me.